EcoProfit
Ökoprofit ( official spelling ECOPROFIT in capital letters, full Ecological Project for Integrated Environmental Technology ) is a collaborative effort between communities and the local economy with the aim of reducing operating costs while at the same time conserving the natural resources (eg water, energy). This manufacturing companies, service providers and social services as well as craftsmen are equally addressed.
Principle
Important building blocks of the concept are joint workshops of participating companies, in which the contents of Cleaner Production are taught and suburb deliberations by Ökoprofit consultant. After about a year of project duration, the shops based on a set of criteria ( submission of a waste management concept, successful implementation of measures ambitious environmental program, environmental policy, environmental team, using ratios, etc.) are reviewed and awarded by the city for their services. Many businesses complete after attending a Ökoprofit basic program -standard environmental management system, and can be certified to ISO 14001.
Unlike other focused only on the individual operating environmental management approaches Ökoprofit aims at the formation of a local network to environmental protection. After a year in the base program contact many businesses at a club, where they are informed at regular workshops on new developments in environmental law and relevant organizational and technical innovations.
Dissemination
The project was in the early 1990s in Graz ( Austria ) from the city of Graz, represented by the city environmental department and the Working Group STENUM at the Institute of Fundamentals of Process Engineering of the Technical University of Graz, developed. The original Austrian project spread internationally.
One of the strongholds in Austria include Vorarlberg with over 150 factories in Ökoprofit Club. Since December 12, 2013 is to complement the Eco-profit network, a separate association for increased environmental awareness among the already certified Ökoprofitunternehmen and the public and interested parties. Vienna and Graz each have over 150 companies than Ökoprofit participant companies.
Internationally, this approach to group-wise implementation of preventive environmental protection is adopted: in Germany over 2000 companies have participated in Ökoprofitprojekten. In Hamburg alone, more than 200 companies were certified in 2010.
In North Rhine -Westphalia 2010 1055 companies have participated in this project to July.
In NRW, 40,400 tons of waste, 3.1 million m3 of water or waste water, 545 million kWh of electricity, 186,000 tonnes of CO2 and around € 50 million operating cost savings per year. The investment for this savings amount to € 141 million and pay for themselves within three years.
The municipalities involved are in North Rhine-Westphalia, among others the cities of Aachen, Dortmund, Hamm, Bielefeld and Münster. Alone in these cities, more than 200 companies have participated in Ökoprofit and formed local substructures.
Ökoprofit is international of cities and regions in Italy (Modena ), Slovenia (Ljubljana and Maribor ), Hungary ( Pecs ), in India ( Gurgaon, Hyderabad ), Colombia ( Bucaramanga, Medellin ), Korea ( Incheon, Busan, Daegu ), China ( Panzihua ) in Nicaragua and the Philippines used as a model of cooperation between the municipality with regional businesses.